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Gary Kildall
(1942-1994) Creator of the CP/M
Operating SystemWhile it
was Microsoft created an empire and made billions of dollars
from developing and selling the operating system software that
run virtually all the PC's in the World, In the days before the
IBM PC, a small company called Digital Research Incorporated,
founded by Gary Kildall the creator of an operating system
called Control Program for Microcomputers or CP/M was it was
widely known as. Back before self contained PC's
Mainframes and minicomputers each had their own operating
systems supplied by the companies that made the computers.
When PC's infiltrated offices and homes, most of the
manufactures of what was then the world's smallest computers
were small companies themselves and didn't have the resources to
have inhouse programming departments to create operating
systems. Third party companies popped up to create
operating systems and all kinds of other software.
Gary Kildall and Digital
Research had the opportunity to get CP/M on the IBM PC and make
Billions from it. When the suits from IBM came to talk to
Kildall buying CP/M, they came with a non-disclosure agreement
before telling Killdall and his wife why they there. His
wife sent away the men from Big Blue, Microsoft became provider
of the operating system for the IBM PC and every clone that came
out on the market. After unintentionally ceding the
operating system fortune to Microsoft, Digital Research updated
CP/M into a version that runs on IBM PC's and clones called
CP/M-86, which didn't catch on with computer buyers or program
developers. Digital Research released a Graphical User Interface
called Graphical Environment Manager or GEM which sat on top of
CP/M similar to how the early versions of Windows sat on top of
DOS. GEM ran on computers Intel 8088 and Motorola 68000
processors. Atari even shipped GEM with the ST model
computer. GEM was dealt an early end when Apple Computer
sued Digital Research. Digital Research then put out a
clone of MS-DOS called DR-DOS. Microsoft responded by
putting out a new version of MS-DOS within a few months of each
release of DR-DOS. The
end of Digital Research came when Novell bought the company in
1991. The executives at Novell believed that having DR-DOS
would help better position Netware against Microsoft. On
July of 1994 Kildall mysteriously collapsed in a restaurant in
Seattle, passing away three days later. Cause of death is
officially listed as blunt force trauma to the head, but some
speculators still have doubts about how Gary Kildall met his
demise. |
Bob
Metcalfe Co-Inventor of
Ethernet Founder of 3Com
Unknown known to everyday computer
users, and not commonly known even to those who make their
living in the technology industry that the standard networking
technology used today has it's roots in the earliest days of
personal computing. Today's computer networks are built on
Ethernet which was invented about 35 years ago. Back in
1973 At the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center Bob Metcalfe and
David Boggs developed Ethernet.
In 1979 Metcalfe left Xerox
PARC and founded 3Com and became one of the first to
commercialize on computer networking. Ethernet would not
became the standard which the world uses to connect its
computers with yet. 3Com had to compete against IBM's
Token Ring. Government offices and banks chose Token Ring
simply because they trusted IBM a lot more than they trusted an
upstart company like 3Com.
Most smaller corporations took
a chance on 3Com and wired up Ethernet networks. After a
little more development work at 3Com data throughput rates on
Ethernet reached ten megabits per second, which was two and a
half times that token ring offered which topped out at four
megabits per second. IBM responded with refinements to
Token ring which brought token ring up to 16Mbps. 3Com
brought the speed of Ethernet up to 100 Mbps and blew away what
IBM had to offer. Eventually 3Com licensed Ethernet
technology to other companies so that they could make their own
Ethernet equipment. This brought down the cost of Ethernet
technology. |
Kevin
Mitnick Notorious Hacker
Apprehension brought attention to the need for Internet Security
In the early 1995 when Internet
service started to become available to ordinary Joes, very few
people were aware of the risks associated with going online.
That changed when Kevin Mitnick was apprehended on February, 15,
1995. Mitnick's career in
hacking started when he was twelve years old, when he used a
simple paper hole punch to make his own punch cards to get free
rides on the bus. He later went on to Phone Phreaking
popular hack in the late 1970's that allowed free long distance
calls by playing audio tones at certain frequencies that sent
commands to telephone switching equipment Mitnick
moved into hacking computer networks in 1979 when he first
hacked into the network at Digital Equipment Corporation.
At one point Mitnick used a TRS-80 at a Radio Shack store for
his hacking activities. Mitnick went on to hack into the
networks at IBM, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Sun Microsystems and
Siemens. It is rumored that Mitnick also hacked into
systems at SCO, PacBell, the FBI, The Pentagon, Novell, the
California DMV, USC, and the Los Angeles Unified School
District. Mitnick spent
almost four years in prison before facing trial. The laws
at that time in which Mitnick was charged under were a lot
weaker than they are now and was sentenced to a further four
years in prison. Kevin Mitnick was released on January,
21, 2000. After a further three years on probation where
Mitnick was prohibited from using computers or the Internet he
started his own Internet security consulting company. |
Jon
Lech Johansen AKA DVD Jon
Broke DVD Encryption and brought fair use into the DVD age
In the late 1990’s as DVD’s with
their superior picture sound and picture quality became the
reason that people were sending their VHS collections to
landfills, the movie studios thought that the content scrambling
system encoded on DVD’s would prevent piracy. In October of 1999
a program called DeCSS was released that allowed ripping of
DVD’s on to peoples’ computers. The author of DeCSS was Jon Lech
Johansen, a teenager from Norway. Johansen had cracked the
encryption on DVD’s for a perfectly legitimate reason, he wanted
to play his DVD’s on his PC running Linux.
After complaints from the
American movie studios Johansen was prosecuted for creating a
program that circumvents the copy protection on DVD’s which
would enable piracy. The trial began in December of 2002, and an
acquittal soon followed. An appeal was launched and Johansen now
affectionately known as DVD Jon would be retried. The second
trial started in December of 2003 and on December 22nd
DVD Jon was acquitted a second time based on the facts that DVD
Jon used his own DVD’s to figure out how Content Scrambling
System and making a back up copy falls under fair use provision
in Norway’s copyright law. In January of 2004 it was announced
that no further appeals would be pursued and all charged were
dropped.
Since then DVD Jon has been
active in the development of technologies to allow people to get
around Digital Rights Management technologies so that people can
use content such as music and video and use it on any device.
Johansen’s latest project is called doubletwist which is a
program to remove digital rights management from songs bought
from online music stores for use with any portable music player.
So a song that is only available from iTunes can be played with
any with a Zune or any other player.
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Karlheinz
Brandenberg Inventor of MP3
How people enjoy music today
wouldn't be anything like it is today without the contribution
of Karlheinz Brandenberg. It was in the early 1990's that
Brandenberg invented MPEG Audio Layer 3 encoding or better known
as MP3. When he was a researcher at the
Frauenhofer
Institute where him and a research team developed the
compression algorithm for MP3. The very first song encoded
as an MP3 was "Tom's Diner" by Susanne Vega from the album
Solitude Standing. He picked the song because of the quiet
passages in the song would easily reveal any faults in the
algorithm.
MP3 wasn't noticed much at first
in the early 1990's because there was very little need to
compress audio on computers at the time. In 1996
Brandenberg recieved a patent from the United States Patent
Office. After demonstrating MP3 shortly after receiving
the patent, interest in MP3 took off when Internet service
became a ubiquitous presence in homes and workplaces around the
world. At first songs in MP3 format were distributed
though underground FTP and web sites which were quickly shut
down by order of the recording companies. Many online
music stores have since been set up using audio compression
technology by Microsoft, Apple and other companies. None
of which would have come into existence without MP3 and it's
inventer, Karlheinz Brandenberg.
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Shawn
Fanning Inventor of Napster
When MP3 first became popular in
the late 1990's finding songs as MP3 files was difficult at
first. Songs were available from underground web sites
that were forced offline quickly by threat of lawsuit from the
recording industry. Shawn Fanning decided that to help
make MP3's easier to find he created a search engine for MP3
files held on peoples' computers and to download directly from
each other. Initially Napster was a closed network for
Fanning's close friends at Northeastern University where he was
a student. Eventually Napster was made public and it
caught the attention big music and that's when the lawsuits came
flying. After close to two years of court room action
Napster was shut down and was sold to Roxio which after a year
or so Napster became a legitimate online music store.
Selling music online would have
never have happened without the original Napster. The
recording industry was hell bent on keeping people buying CD's.
After the Napster genie was let out of the bottle there was no
it was going back in. Even before the end came to the
original free Napster there were many other peer to peer
networks sprouting up. Although other peer to peer
networks have gotten shut down many more come along to take it's
place. While peer to peer networks allow people to get
music without paying the musicians and songwriters as they
deserve, but does help curb the obscene profiteering by the
recording companies.
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